Journey
by alltwisty
Summary: This is the story of Adrien, a war hero and a rake, a brave and noble scion of the House of Elsivall, who has no idea what to do with herself.


Chapter 1.

Rainstorms rolled across Elsivall throughout that whole summer. It was the summer of Adrien Taesla's thirtieth year, also her last at Stonegriff, as it turned out, for a very long and unexpected while. Now, however inauspiciously, she woke to a crash of thunder to find herself fully clothed and laying crosswise atop the blankets of her bed, blinking owlishly into the shadows gathered in the corners of the canopied bedposts.

By the second blink her head commenced a blinding throb, which gave her pause to contemplate her own mortality. Courageously, after a moment, she took another stab at life and swallowed. Emboldened, she then experimented with moving her tongue, which felt coated by something that had perhaps been scraped from the stable floor, tried moving it across her chapped lips. The results were nauseating, literally. Something quite cranky had taken up residence below her ribcage. She thought it might be her stomach.

Beyond the refuge of the bed curtains, she heard the rain drumming violently against the tall windows of her bower. Quietly she lay, letting the sound soothe the riot of her senses as sleep released her and the previous night came trickling back. This was Stonegriff. Home. The hall … many cups of wine. How many? Gods. There had been minstrels. Strains of song stirred the muddy surface of her memory… dancing, snatches of conversation. Had she … actually … wrestled the cook's son to the floor? All in good fun, of course, but had everyone seen it that way? Now Adrien pressed her hands over her beleaguered forehead in dismay. In her mind she saw Janutys again as she helped him to his feet, his face aflame with embarrassment and, yes, perhaps anger. She saw the baron's face – her brother, Cheslan – stonily forbidding, thin lips pressed into an even thinner, tight line of disapproval.

Fuck it. Her breath hitched in her chest. These were the moments, always, these first waking moments that Adrien felt it most keenly, all the bulk and history of the castle and nine generations of Taesla family history pressing down upon her. Naturally, she had to throw in a hangover. She sat up and immediately regretted it as her stomach lurched dangerously. Planting her hands on the bed to steady herself, Adrien took a couple of deep breaths, noticing as she did so that her boots, at least, were off. It must have been Clea, her handmaid, who had seen to that.

She heard the squeaky hinge of the chamber door, and then the hollow _wumph!_ of it closing again. Movement, metallic rattling, items being shifted on the bedside table.

"Clea?" Adrien called out softly. The bed curtain was drawn back, and Adrien only had to squint a little against a slight increase in the light level; excellent Clea had kept the heavy curtains over the windows drawn this morning.

She stood in the part with one hand holding back the curtain, a petite, chestnut-haired woman only a year older than Adrien, regarding her mistress with that familiar solemn amusement. "Well, she lives and breathes! My lady."

Adrien groaned, feebly pressed her face into her hands. "Don't. I'm too weak. There's no sport in it."

Clea paused in her wordless way, her smile broadening, and then pushed the curtain back. "I brought tea," she chirped, turning away from her mistress to the service she had set upon the bedside table, "and a bit of toasted bread."

"Blessed Clea," breathed Adrien. With grateful anticipation she watched Clea pour, delighted by the sweet aroma of the gnomish tea that was her favorite. Clea knew these things, of course, and though not a single gnome from the Sage Hills had passed Stonegriff's gates in nearly a month, somehow Clea always had a bit of mjerrkat tea on hand. It was a regional favorite in Elsivall, and nowhere more so than at Stonegriff, and so the kitchen was forever running out between visits from the gnomish traders. For Clea's mistress, though, there was always somehow an ample supply. Adrien pictured the little handmaid raiding the larder at midnight, squirreling away packets of tea when Kord, the butler, wasn't looking. It made her smile. "Where are you hiding the tea?"

"Mind your business," replied Clea, turning with a steaming cup upheld. She considered the pathetic picture of Adrien among her rumpled bedclothes. "I think you should take this here by the window, miss."

"Oh, gods, no," Adrien moaned, but Clea had already moved away, out of Adrien's sight and ostensibly toward the overstuffed armchair set beside the windows. She stilled herself, listening hopefully to the handmaid's movements beyond the bed curtains.

"It's getting on midday, miss." A definitive _fwump!_ signaled the fluffing of a pillow.

Adrien's condition left her too compromised to do more than capitulate and grumble. She dragged herself from the refuge of her bed and padded barefoot around it to see Clea turning away from the side table to reach toward the curtain. Adrien growled. "Open that and I'll cut my throat right here."

"With your sharpened wit, I'm guessing," said Clea, but she refrained, turning instead to throw back the bed curtains.

Adrien crossed over the lush expanse of her Bellerian rug to her chair. Upon returning to Stonegriff, ending the two years of residence in the city of Trevathan that followed the war, she had staked her refuge here within the castle to these two rooms - an erstwhile supplies cache room now housing Adrien's bathtub and vanity, and the main chamber, a former sunroom with a view overlooking the tiny, hidden pleasance at the foot of the lone southeast tower. Its provenance as the Taesla women's private retreat began with Adrien's grandmother, Lady Marchande, who tended her orchids and daffodils in the room now dominated by Adrien's bed, her wardrobe, her desk that was a gift from her late father. Adrien's mother, the Lady Alin, had loved to paint here. There were times when Adrien stood here, as she did at this moment, and could almost feel herself back in any one of those thousand moments she once spent here by her mother's side, in this soft light. Now it was hers alone.

As she settled herself in the armchair, Adrien noticed for the first time the deplorable state of her clothing, the linen chemise and breeches she'd worn … riding? … yesterday. Yes, an entire swatch of her previous afternoon sprang full-formed back into her memory. She'd taken out her favorite old roan, Gerrey, a gift from her father for her seventeenth birthday … and had set about her libations at once upon her return without even taking a moment to come upstairs here and bathe or change clothes. She grimaced, truly embarrassed for the first time since waking, and ran her hand over the hopelessly wrinkled front of her shirt. "Clea, I'm … damp?" Then she paused. "Did I run outside again?"

"Oh, you don't remember?" Clea reappeared from behind the bed with a little plate of buttered toast and a wicked grin.

"Not really," Adrien sighed, taking the proffered teacup and gratefully inhaling the fragrant steam. "Not at all, in fact. I don't care to do so, I think … was it before or after I put Janutys on the ground?"

"After, miss."

"I do remember that bit, a little." Another sip, and Adrien speculated the toast apprehensively.

"Rather unseemly, miss. I imagine tongues are wagging today."

Adrien rolled her eyes. "I give a quince about that, don't I?"

"Lucky for you, you don't," grinned Clea.

Adrien set her cup down and decided to have a go at the toast.

A knock on the door fractured the moment. "Who is that!?" whispered Adrien hoarsely. Clea turned and crossed the room. Adrien watched her with saucer-eyed dismay as the handmaid stopped at the door, easing it open only as far as she was wide.

From without, a slender hand, elegantly fingered and laden with jewelry, a hand Adrien recognized immediately as belonging to the baroness, shot out and palmed the door open wide with all customary impatient authority. Bowing deeply, Clea backed away, treating Adrien to a live portrait of Lady Valerica framed in the threshold together with Adrien's sister, the young Miss Randallyn Taesla.

Adrien looked to Clea. No help there. The maid was suddenly and deeply absorbed in making up Adrien's bed.

Valerica, never one to wait for an invitation, strode into the room and right up to Adrien's chair with Randallyn one step behind. The combined the force of their wordless approbation, leavened only slightly with wicked glee on Valerica's side and with anxious confusion on Randallyn's, pinned Adrien to her seat like a rabbit pinned beneath the shadow of the hawk. Her right hand, with its triangle of toast, was paralyzed midway from plate to mouth.

Recovering, Adrien dropped the toast on its plate and grinned up at her sister-in-law. "Is this my punishment, then?"

Valerica's gave her own smile fully then, dazzling in her wolfish, dark-haired beauty. "That appears to be already under way, my darling little reprobate."

"Don't say that, Valerica," fretted Randallyn, touching Valerica's arm. Adrien glanced at the younger woman with warm appreciation. Two sisters could not possibly be more different, but Randallyn was ever Adrien's unfailing advocate.

"Fair enough," replied Adrien good-naturedly as she raked one hand through her unruly blonde mop. "You're just in time. Clea and I were about to review the list of my transgressions."

Valerica scoffed at Adrien. "Oh, gods, never mind that! That well will never run dry. We're bringing real news, darling."

The visitors looked to Clea, who smiled sheepishly and moved away from the side of the tidied bed. "I'll go ready your bath now, miss," she said, and excused herself.

_Traitor_, thought Adrien, nodding and smiling. She turned to her sister-in-law with dubious enthusiasm. "Such as?"

"Lord Marteram's herald is in the hall. Right now!" blurted Randallyn, then withering under Valerica's irritated glance, she retreated to perch on the edge of Adrien's bed like a rare and delicate ginger bird.

Adrien's head swivelled between them. "And so, what?" But she knew very well what. Jaeryd Hume, Baron of Marteram, had sent his herald here to Stonegriff, and the implication that fact carried – one rather public and not a little embarrassing to Adrien – was undeniable no matter what the official pretext.

How foolish was she that ridiculous night not long ago at the Spring Fair, when she had allowed herself that regrettable indiscretion with the baron. More foolish still to yammer it to Randallyn and Valerica. It seemed plain now that they would never let it go.

It was the sense of obligation that chafed her. Yes, that there seemed to be no way around it. It was the exclusive province of her kind, that population of unwed, unruly older sisters of the petty noblemen who bristled out of the Anandian landscape. She would be flushed out, no doubt, given chase by each various and sundry suitor until she was driven, like some panting hind, into the thicket of matrimony. And then what, she wondered?

Valerica explained, or rather predicted. "Lord Marteram will call the bans of tournament to the House of Taesla."

"That may be true, but then there is the other thing, too," replied Randallyn craftily.

Adrien glowered. "There is no other thing! Damn! I don't know why you say such things, Randy. What is it with you two today? You see I'm not well."

They just laughed at her.

The rain softened abruptly, its drumbeat fading against the panes. Adrien prayed to no god in particular in hastening the solitude she needed to brood properly. She needed to be alone with her thoughts, and her headache.

"Are we getting dressed, then? Cheslan will doubtless send for you. We should go to the hall before he sends a page – you know how cranky that makes you." Valerica joined Randallyn at the edge of the bed, taking the younger woman's hand. They beamed cherubically at Adrien, and yet diabolically at the same time. Adrien wondered at it.

"Best done is quickly done," she growled. Huffily she rose and went to her wardrobe, pulling out an assortment unlikely for the sister of a baron – sleeveless leather jerkin, green linen breeches, gray stockings, and soft leather boots. The materials were of the richest variety, of course, and the craftsmanship the finest - she was a baron's sister, after all. Adrien was a woman who put a stipend to good use.

"Don't trip over your enthusiasm," Valerica grinned. "They only just rode in, after all."

"They? Please tell me at least there is someone interesting in the lot." Standing before the modest glass affixed to the wall beside her wardrobe Adrien put her hair to the usual ministrations of clip and ribbon, with the usual final result of a messy but not unpleasing approximation of a bun. The face staring back at her as she accomplished this remarkable feat was a face of bold structure, a Taesla face, but with the chiseled delicacy of her elven mother.

"If you think dirty's interesting," sighed Randallyn. "They look like they just crashed through a mudbath."

"Well, it has been _raining_," Adrien laughed, cocking her head toward one of the windows as she reached for the final element of her ensemble, her quillioned broadsword in its scabbard.

"It's just the herald and one of the baron's soldiers," replied Valerica.

Clea returned from the bath chamber and stopped short when took in her mistress' apparelled state. "Shall I stop the bath, miss?"

"No," groused Adrien, buckling her sword around her hips, "hopefully this won't take long."

"Sister. You can't go down there dressed like that," Randallyn seemed pained to point out.

Adrien held her arms out and surveyed herself with a smile. "What? If I'm to hear these bans, I should at least look like I'm ready for a fight."

Valerica smiled frankly, crossing her arms. "That's right, that would be the problem, wouldn't it?"

"I don't know what you mean," Adrien obfuscated.

"Jaeryd Hume isn't looking for a fight, he's looking for a wife!"

"Well, I'm not looking for a husband. Besides, it's his tournament – of course he's looking for a fight."

"Hmm. That may be true, but I'm guessing he'd only come to you for something different."

There wasn't much to say to that. For her own part, Adrien found it less impressive that Hume seemed to be holding his ground. Gallant, perhaps, she smiled, but if she hadn't scared him off yet, it only meant she hadn't scared him off yet.

With Valerica and Randallyn in her wake Adrien left for the great hall of Stonegriff. The three women, the entire female contingent of the House of Taesla, stepped out beneath the small portico that sheltered the steps to Adrien's bower. Behind them was Clea, following unobtrusively, closing the door behind them as she came.

Adrien breathed deeply, grateful for the fresh air bracing away the grip of her hangover. Below her gaze, through the curtain of the soft, dense drizzle, the flat green expanse of the lower bailey stretched toward the great hall. This would be the most direct route, also the dampest and most likely to bring them into contact with other inhabitants and possible further unwelcome discussion of her most recent antics.

"We should go through the conservatory," presciently remarked Valerica, slipping an arm through Adrien's with a sly grin. "More circuitous perhaps, but definitely drier and socially less risky."

Adrien slanted her own grin in her sister-in-law's direction and tugged her to their right down the steps to the loggia that passed behind the pleasance, hugging the foot of the wall out to the east barbican.

"Adrien, is it proper for Lord Marteram to beg your favor, if you are in the lists?" Randallyn wondered idly along their circumspect procession. Never was she one too keen on the finer points of the etiquette of the joust.

"He'll find it at the end of my lance," growled Adrien, which caused Valerica to chuckle.

"Sir Gallas shall have mine!" Randallyn crooned, and drawing a silk handkerchief from the sleeve of her dress, she waved it daintily, as though hailing her champion from the berfrois.

All this prompted from Adrien was an eye rolling. "I daresay," she quipped, and this time Valerica laughed aloud, and swatted Adrien's shoulder.

At last their serpentine track led to the conservatory, which Adrien knew would be empty, a sad fact since it she always had thought it was such a charming room. Valerica released her arm here, and one behind another, with Adrien leading of course, the four women filed through the servants' entrance into the room's southern reaches where tall windows spilled rectangles of bluish-gray light onto the parquet.

The upper panes had been opened today, stirring the indolent air. Set about was an array of ripely upholstered chaises and armchairs of just the sort most beloved by aristocratic buttocks when waiting for their moment to curry the baron's favor next door in the hall. Navigating these across to the entrance to the great hall, Adrien automatically looked to her right, where the lounge gave way to the proper conservatory, this area cloaked in grey owing to tightly drawn curtains.

The piano stood like a ghostly sentinel in the far corners, the line of violins, mandolins, every type of stringed instrument arrayed in ranks of silence. All of the Taesla children had musical training – her oldest brother, Treffyr, Cheslan, Adrien herself, Randallyn – but since Alin and Treffyr died, none of them ever played anymore. Alin had been an enthusiastic patron to dozens of musicians from every corner of Anandia and even beyond; in her days as baroness this chamber was stuffed perpetually with guests and performers.

Now it remained mostly cold and empty, rarely offered to visitors, except when the usual holiday village children's choral was given for his lordship. Even this, Adrien suspected, might be more thanks to Cheslan's reluctance to be seen as the lord who freezes the children come to pay him homage. Adrien knew her brother's preference, whenever possible, for entertaining the villagers out of doors.

Her fledgling good mood, abruptly muted by this dismal reminder of her ruined family, sank further as they came to the doors thrown open to the great hall, where the two flanking guardsmen snapped to attention at their approach. Beyond the threshold, through seeping moted light, the echo of voices overlapping stilled as the heralding shout of the guards called all eyes upon her entrance. This was the entire announcement that Adrien ever required. Embarrassingly, as usual, activity stalled for a brief spell. She felt a moment of gratitude for the dusty backlight that angled down from behind her, for as much as it diffused her view of those already present, she knew it diffused theirs of her as well. She paused a moment to wonder how many of those present at this moment had also been present last night.

Then, pushing that aside, she considered that here was nothing more than a pretty trap, full of forced smiles and awkward niceties, perhaps, but possessing nothing that could touch her. Armed with this conviction, she stepped into the midst of it with her usual purposeful disregard, striding up the carpeted center aisle past the rows of lower tables with Valerica and Randallyn flanking, and Clea bringing up the rear, toward the forefront of the respectful crescent gathered before his lordship. Simple peasants, local artisans, soldiers, knights sworn to her brother, propertied men and women stepped back to afford their passage.

Breathing in their rich scent of rain and earth, perfume and sweat, Adrien was energized by their humanity and their deference. She swept her gaze over them in her haughty pleasure, her keen eye taking but a moment to pick out the liveried herald of Marteram and his jowly, heavyset bodyguard. Then in but a moment she stood before the dais beneath the gaze of the baron himself.

As always, for this early part of the baron's day, the dais had been stripped down to its official necessities. The long trestle table had been removed, and all other furniture save two high backed ironwood chairs flanking a small table whereupon rested a bowl of fruit and a decanter of water. One of these was occupied by the baron, slightly bored but good-naturedly abiding the nearing conclusion of the seemingly endless entreaties and matters for his official consideration. As always, to his left stood the burly, auburn-haired Kieran Redblade, captain of the baronial guard, and his lieutenant, the elf Melrayel Beltainne, thanesman of Alin.

In a plain, belted jerkin and hose with low, soft boots, Cheslan leaned in his seat with casual grace. Slender and elegant, he was unmistakably his elven mother's son, and gifted with her natural magnetic brightness and charm. His warm gaze fell upon the women of his house with an unmistakable pride that yes, here was a collection of beauty unrivalled anywhere in the kingdom, and yet also, lighting upon Adrien, suddenly imparted to Adrien with millefeuille steel the certain knowledge that Cheslan was furious with her.

Almost as one, they deferred to his lordship, Valerica and Randallyn and even little Clea with graceful curtsies, but Adrien bowing from the waist as would any proud Anandian warrior, one hand resting on the pommel of her sword as though ready in a moment to bring it to bear in his service. Standing straight, she met his eyes, crystal blue like her own and glittering with all of the unpleasant things he no doubt wanted to say to his sister, just not in front of the guests.

There was an amazing hush over the gathering. Randallyn and Valerica moved immediately with no sound save the rustle of muslin, Randallyn to stand in her place at the foot of the dais to his lordship's right, Valerica to ascend the dais to her place beside her husband. Yet Adrien stood, unshrinking, awaiting his lordship's further command. She felt and tried to ignore the sweat beading on her forehead.

"Dear sister, if you please," Cheslan beckoned, gesturing to the space beside Randallyn where he wished for her to attend him. She felt the sting in each syllable, where the real communication was, the sure knowledge that another conversation was coming, and soon. Fair enough. Adrien regarded her baby brother, thought of all the times she had wiped his runny nose.

She bowed again, more fervently this time, a deeply sweeping gesture that made her stomach roll. "My lord," she answered and, Clea at her heel, moved as bidden. How touching were the gallant efforts of Kieran and Melrayel not to smile too broadly at what they must have known was purely her torment. She forced herself not to look at them, but to preserve her fragile decorum she locked her attention upon the pattern in the carpet.

"Yes. Excellent to have you with us, Adrien," said Cheslan. "Marteram's herald has just arrived with a message from his lordship." The baron clapped his hands once and held them out to the herald, inviting him to step forward.

Adrien's glance flicked in that direction and found the eyes of the herald's bodyguard upon her with an impudence that made her hackles rise. She locked eyes with him pointedly, and yet he held his gaze defiantly for a moment before looking away as the herald commenced his announcement.

Her attention returned to the herald himself as the young man unfurled a scroll of parchment and cleared his throat. "Be it known to all now that in service to my lord, Jaeryd Hume, 12th Baron of Marteram, hereby it is given into knowledge of all right honorable knights of Elsivall, and to Lord Elsivall or his champion of whomsoever he chooses, that great desire and worship hath taken upon them the third day of next Highsun hence, to meet with Lord Marteram at lists of honor, there to appear at nine of the bell before noon, and to joust against the knights of Marteram, and all such gentlemen of name and arms as have cause to join, until six of the bell after noon. And then by advice of the high and mighty, redoubted, and most worshipful ladies and gentlewomen of Marteram, to bestow unto the three best Jousters a diamond, a ruby and a sapphire. Given unto this day, ladies and gentlemen of Elsivall, this message is done."

The day was beginning to look up.

"Most agreeable," Cheslan smiled upon the herald. "You and your man refresh yourselves at my hearth, and carry to your lord my answer to his bans, that Elsivall heartily accepts and will carry the day at Marteram, the third of Highsun or any other day! Now let us draw this office to its conclusion."

The herald then bowed deeply to the baron, backing away into the ensuing tumult of the dispersing crowd as tongues immediately commenced wagging. At an appropriate distance from his lordship, the herald turned and exited the hall, rolling up his scroll as he went, followed by his man at arms, who in so doing yet did not fail to send another lewd glance, this time in Clea's direction.

Adrien pressed her lips together against her welling aggression. _No trouble today, Adrien_, she self-admonished, instead turning to Clea with, "I'll have that bath now, dear." At the same moment that Clea moved to carry out her command, Adrien felt her sister's hand upon her arm. She turned in the other direction, surprised to find Randallyn's face very close to hers, extraordinarily pretty in its light of excitement.

"Sister! The most fortunate news! Sir Gallas is sure to steal the glory! Do you think Cheslan will choose him as his champion?"

Adrien grinned. "No, I think not."

"Well, why ever not?"

"Because he's going to choose me, right now."


End file.
